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Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Here are 8 great stamina building workouts that for distance runners that I wanted to share with you in this blog post. These are workouts that will help improve either your lactate threshold (LT) or your aerobic threshold (AT) and help you hold a faster pace for longer in your distance races. Lactate Threshold Centered Workouts

Lactate Threshold Tempo Run (LT Tempo)

Workout: Continuous run of between 24 and 30 minutes at as even a pace as possible

Monday, February 2, 2015

The surface we run on, as we would expect, can effect to
some degree the stresses on the body during running. The legs change their rigidity in
anticipation of the landing surface, and the timing and load of the stress of
impact can change by milliseconds and millimeters depending on the surface
landing on.

Given this information my recommendations on running surfaces
are 2 fold:

Be careful about making changes quickly in the
type of surfaces you run on.If you move
from training solely on one surface type to running solely on another (such as
exclusively trails to exclusively pavement), you will likely experience some
problems as the muscles, tendons and joints of the legs adjust to the changes in
impact forces and timing.I recommend
making any changes to the mix of surfaces you run on gradually. But if you find
yourself in a situation where the changes has to happen quickly (such as with
travel or a move), back off on the mileage you run a little bit at first to
help give your body a little help adapting to the change in stresses.Then gradually over time you can ramp it back
up to previous levels.Remember, the body
adapts best to gradual changes.

You need to prepare your body specifically for
the surfaces you will race on. If we know that the body faces slightly
different stresses on different surfaces than it makes sense that we need to do
a fair amount of running on the surface we plan to race on so that our body is
well adapted to that surface and ready for the stresses involved in it.As a marathon coach, I have seen many times
over the years where runners (at all levels) failed to do this and it came back
to bite them on race day.They did most
of their long runs and tempo runs on trails or dirt roads and when they raced
their marathon on the roads they had unexpected issues with their feet and
different leg muscles or tendons.Prepare
your body specifically for the stresses it will encounter on race day.

There is no 1 best surface to run on. Each is different and has its own benefits
and drawbacks. The best approach is to
understand that and use each according to need, and availability. We have a big diverse world in which to run,
understand it, enjoy it, and explore it.